Opinion Archive

Speak up. Talk to your children, your siblings, your friends. Tell them until they’re sick of hearing it: “One pill can kill.”

By now, most people know the United States is plagued by opioid addiction, overdoses and death; most people have heard of fentanyl, know that it’s dangerous even in miniscule doses; know it’s combined with other drugs to increase drug dealers’ profits….and still, fentanyl-related overdoses are on the rise.

As a young boy, when you see a basketball coach throw a chair onto the court during a game while watching on television, it kind of turns out to be the thing that you remember the most about said coach.
That coach happened to be Bobby Knight, one of the most famous in all of basketball history.

I’m really- very – disappointed in the county commissioner’s decision to amend the lease on Navarre Beach for an RV Park. The commissioners, Parker, Calkins, and Wright seemingly put feelings ahead of facts. They definitely put themselves in the developers’ shoes and not in the shoes of our tax-paying beach residents that already live or own property on Navarre Beach. And what happened to the “rule” that you defer to the county commissioner that is “responsible” for the district the property in question is in? Eddington voted NO.

They wear black and white striped shirts. They throw flags and blow their whistles. And boy do they take a ton of heat.
The life of an official for a sporting event, especially a high school sporting event, is not an easy one.

These days, I am toting two smartphones, one is my personal phone, the other is the church phone. Friends raise their eyebrows whenever I lay my two phones on a table at restaurants. They give me a subtle, amused look that says, “Somebody sure thinks he’s important.” Thankfully, I am not all that important, so having two phones has not resulted in twice as many phone calls.

The sports world came to a screeching halt last Tuesday.
And it had nothing to do with Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift calling it quits on the relationship NFL fans are growing more tired of each day.

“Here in Santa Rosa County, we, and all of our neighbors in the gateway to Florida, find ourselves facing an alarming and distressing challenge – a fentanyl crisis is knocking at our door and making it the epicenter of overdose incidents within the state. The severity of this crisis has taken a devastating toll, with a sharp rise in overdoses and a grim reality: most people who use fentanyl in our area do not survive.

I attempted to order the book, “Son of Hamas” from Amazon this week but it isn’t available. I don’t know if they sold out or if it is out of print. I downloaded the audio book instead.

A few weeks ago, I celebrated one more birthday by adding another notch to my belt. You see, each year on my birthday, my one request of my wife is that she prepare for me an obscene quantity of my favorite food – spaghetti with a cheesy bechamel sauce. My request always presents a moral dilemma for her, pitting her love for me against her concern for my health; that dish would be high on any cardiologist’s list of foods to avoid.

Inevitably, debates over helping the needy come down to who should provide services. Conservatives argue families and churches should bear that burden, NOT taxpayers; liberals retort that families and churches can’t or aren’t doing enough and it’s up to government.